In: Statistics and Probability
Part 1: Choosing a study type. What is the best way to answer each of the following questions: an experiment, a sample survey, or an observational study that is not a sample survey? Be sure to provide a detailed explanation for each of your choices. a) Do employees who listen to music while they are working perform better in their job tasks than those employees who do not listen to music while working? b) Is your favorite sports team penalized more during away games than during home games? c) Are high school graduates satisfied with the diversity of jobs available to them straight out of high school?
a
Experiment because here we want to measure the lift in performance of employees who listen to music while working and controlling employees who do not listen to music while working.
Treatment - employees who listen to music while working
Control - employees who do not listen to music while working
We will check whether treatment group performs significantly better than the control group
b
Observation study because we have the observations and we can use descriptive statistics to make a conclusion.
Here, we check if the mean penalization in the away games is significantly more than the mean penalization in the home games
c
Sample survey because satisfaction can only be measured by asking the participants about their feeling.
We take a random sample and then ask the participants about their feeling. We then check what is the proportion of high school graduates that are satisfied with the diversity of jobs available to them and conclude if it is significant for a predefined significance level and proportion.